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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25190776">Cousins, enemies, survivors</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/protisvit/pseuds/protisvit'>protisvit</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works &amp; Related Fandoms, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>A few millennia will heal many wounds but only feed loneliness, And so has Maglor, Carefully hopeful ending, Family Dynamics, Galadriel has been through a lot, Galadriel reflecting on her relationship with Maglor, Gen, Introspection, It's not easy being a Finwean, Tolkien Gen Week</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 08:35:07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,619</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25190776</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/protisvit/pseuds/protisvit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Galadriel thinks about the only one left of her once large family and what they were, are, and might be to each other.</p><p>Written for Tolkien Gen Week 2020, prompt: Grey spaces/Solo</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>68</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Cousins, enemies, survivors</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They had never been close, neither in age nor company, for he was grown and soon to be married when she was born and to the child she was, his was only the name behind joyful songs she and her friends enjoyed.</p><p>Even though Fëanáro’s relationship with her father had never been as harsh as his feud with Nolofinwë, there had been little affection between them and the first time she remembers meeting her half-uncle’s second son in person, she is half grown herself. She thought him sentimental then, frivolous even, a soft-hearted musician with a penchant for dramatic verse and tales of tragic deeds.</p><p>But he had been kind, she remembers that. More so than his father.</p><p>She had been young Artanis then and he gentle Makaläure and they had been cousins.</p><p> </p><p>The first time they taste their enmity to come, they are facing each other at Alqualondë.</p><p>It is dark now that the Trees have been extinguished, and the terror and confusion colour the night even darker. She takes a deep breath of respite as she moves to clean her sword with a scrap of fabric, that had blown down to the street from one of the hastily closed windows where it had been hung up to dry. The red stains are dark under the stars.</p><p>He rounds the corner then and stills as he sees her, and there is a moment of understanding between them while both of their blades shine cold silver.</p><p>Then he turns around and runs back in the direction where he came from.</p><p>Later, when the ice slowly freezes the warmth out of her skin and her heart, she tells herself he must not have known she was not fighting on his side, that he would surely have attacked her otherwise, that he was as cruel and fae as his father and brothers must be as well.</p><p>But she has always been good at recognising a lie, even from herself.</p><p> </p><p>The next time they meet she is a hardened woman and he King of the Noldor.</p><p>He does not use the title, calling himself Regent instead, in a show of the same sentimentality she thought he must have slain in Alqualondë or burned at Losgar. </p><p>His father is dead, she hears, and his brother taken captive for so many years now, he might as well be. She can find no grief in her heart over her uncle and only little pity for her eldest cousin, yet she wishes he would return to rule instead. Gentleness is, after all, no trait for a King at war.</p><p>When she meets his eyes she imagines he knows this as well.</p><p>He tries to be sharp Maglor now and she thinks she is no longer young.</p><p> </p><p>Then Findekáno returns with Maitimo, no Maedhros now, and she sees Maglor’s shoulders drop with relief, both for his brother’s safety and also, selfishly, for himself.</p><p>But in those days proud Artanis finds it hard to respect people who only strive to follow.</p><p> </p><p>Her uncle becomes High King and she doesn’t see her cousins for many years.</p><p>She is content like that, with them only existing as names to her, fates intertwined with the tale of the Silmarils, which she eventually reveals to King Thingol in her new home of Doriath. A terrible tale, she knows, yet it takes her by surprise when her new King bans their language, <em>her </em>language, over her cousins’ deeds.</p><p>The loss of her last piece of home is another grievance she now holds against them.</p><p> </p><p>The years fly by and she thrives under Melian’s tutelage and crowned by garlands discovers her own gentleness in that hidden, peaceful realm, while behind the borders her cousins and brothers fight a losing battle.</p><p>‘Hypocrite’, a voice in her head sometimes whispers, ‘how can it be, that the ones you call fey stand against the shadow while you hide your powers in these woods?’</p><p>The voice is not directed solely against her, she quickly realises, and carefully closes off her mind.</p><p> </p><p>When Thingol sends Beren on the quest for the Silmaril, she knows the days of peace will soon be over.</p><p>‘They are naïve’, she thinks, ‘a mighty ruler and all his mighty Lords and they still believe these gems will bring them anything but grief.’</p><p>And she is right, but it is her own grief that the quest brings first, when her foolish, warm-hearted, dearest brother perishes in a black pit of wolves and she cannot fault Beren- for Lúthien loves him and she has always had a soft spot for the girl- but she can despise and rage against the Fëanorians, who made her brother’s own people abandon him to certain death.</p><p>
  
</p><p>Yet still the shadow of foreboding only grows stronger in her mind and when one of the Silmarils finds his way to Doriath she cannot help but wonder.</p><p>Will Maglor turn his sword away from Galadriel as Makalaurë had from Artanis?</p><p>And will Galadriel do the same?</p><p>They would be enemies then, or perhaps they already are.</p><p> </p><p>She has no desire to find out and as the Great Alliance fails and comes to tears she turns away from Beleriand as she had from Valinor and crosses the mountains as she had the frozen sea.</p><p>There she dwells for long years, while the tales of her cousins’ deeds become more fell and more desperate until they’re all gone. All dead except for lost Maglor.</p><p>And she is glad it is over.</p><p> </p><p>She is given the opportunity to return to her home in the West but refuses. She has come to Middle Earth to rule in her own right, not to follow and to hide and to lose and perhaps now it will finally be her chance. And she has a husband she greatly loves, who belongs to this wild, wide country he is not yet ready to abandon, while she in turn is not ready to abandon him.</p><p>She finds there, finally, everything she desires and yet she feels strangely hollow at times, now that most of the Calaquendi have chosen to return to the Lands in the West and suddenly she is only Galadriel, with no one left to remember young Artanis.</p><p> </p><p>Her family is far out of her reach and so she builds her own family, but as she watches her daughter grow, she catches herself wishing there were more people to dote on her and to teach and sometimes tease her. Brothers and uncles and cousins. When she sees her little Celebrían, she is reminded of the blessing her large family has been, long before before they were doomed. She teaches her daughter her language and, as she tells her as many tales of her sundered family as she can, she wonders when she had become so sentimental.</p><p> </p><p>Then her daughter grows up and falls in love with Gil-Galad’s herald and Galadriel takes a closer look at the peredhel. He carries a familiar air about him and at first she thinks it must be Lúthien’s blood she senses, but when he reveals his knowledge of the High tongue she knows. He says it is because he is a scholar, because he studies the lore of the old days, but the ease with which he converses does not come from the study of old texts and she recognises his lisp immediately.</p><p>It takes less than expected for him to admit to his upbringing, and there is pride ringing in his voice when he meets her eyes and calls himself a son of Maglor Fëanorion.</p><p>Elrond speaks fondly of Maedhros as well, but most of all he talks about Maglor, and Galadriel surprises herself with the relief she feels at the thought, that she is not the only one anymore who remembers Maglor as kind.</p><p> </p><p>He is alive, still, she know this.</p><p>Sometimes she hears reports of a lone wanderer at the shore, singing his lament to the waves, while other times she imagines she can feel his presence brushing against the barriers that surround Lothlórien. But she never acknowledges it and he never crosses the border into her realm, always returning to the sea instead.</p><p>He will not seek her out, she is sure of this. Her cousin seems to have changed less than she had previously thought and if any part of that soft heart has survived, he will suffer for his deeds for the rest of his days, a tragic figure in his own lament.</p><p>He will not reach out but she thinks one day she might.</p><p>She is not young anymore now, she is considered wise and powerful, a Lady of her own realm and only now she begins to understand how terribly foolish they all had been. How unused to evil and deceit, how innocent, even with swords in their hands. How rash their decisions had been and how deadly their convictions.</p><p>They had not known destruction well enough to avoid becoming its tool but oh, they had been so proud. Proud and arrogant and she most of all.</p><p>She wonders, born to a different father, would she have shared her cousin’s fate?</p><p>No, she would not forget, for such was the curse of the Eldar, and she did not know if she could forgive, but she understood now, at last, how easy it was to be terrible.</p><p> </p><p>Wounds had grown old and her family had grown small and she had finally grown weary of letting go and leaving behind.</p><p>After all, the days of Arda were long and so were their own, and despite everything that had happened, a secret hope had started to grow within her heart that, one day, Galadriel and Maglor might be cousins again.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Kudos are love and comments pure serotonin :)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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